Working out how to bring light into your home is a very important detail that you will want to get right from the outset. To enable you to channel as much as light into your new home as possible, the positioning of your home will be vitally important and this, in turn, will affect how you design your internal space and where you place windows and skylights.
East-west facing homes gain from the rising and setting of the sun but lose the benefit of a south facing home which gets the higher level of sun during the middle of the day. If your design has a north-south face, then you get the sun from the south in the daytime but any windows facing north will feel colder and darker.
Skylights in new homes are very popular and can increase your sense of space as well as light. For instance, a skylight in a sloping roof is known to provide three times as much light as a window in a vertical position facing the same direction. Unlike a conventional window it can flood a lot of space with light and give a completely different atmosphere to a home.
The most well know manufacturer of skylights in the UK is Velux by there are a lot of other retailers who offer very different ranges and sizes of skylights so if you are intending to use them you should shop around. The design and style of your home will influence your choice as will your local Planning Authority who may need to approve your selection, particularly if it is on the front of your house!
Lighting technology has come so far now that a new innovation by Coelux, an Italian company, can completely transform a dark windowless space such as a basement. They can install an artificial light (which is a lamp inside a unit) into a solid ceiling that looks like a real skylight with a view of the sun – www.coelux.com. However, the cost of a single skylight is a five figure sum so conventional lighting in areas without windows is probably the sensible option unless you have an open-ended budget!
There are several designs on our website with skylights which illustrate how the use of such roof lights can flood your home with light and transform it into something stunning – The Dorstone, The Garway, The Grafton, The Madley, The Westgates and The Widemarsh.
